In 1871, the Washington College baseball team recorded its first victory in Centreville, Maryland with a 45-24 win. This blowout victory would embark on a 133 year journey leading up to Tuesday, March 9, during spring break in Orlando, Florida.
The women's lacrosse team recorded the 5,000th victory for Washington College Varsity Athletics with a 12-6 win over Lynchburg College at Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex last week, and the wins continue to pile up for WC.
Who would take the time out of their day to tabulate all those wins to inform the WC community of this milestone? Enter Phil Ticknor, your friendly Sports Information Director. Not only does Ticknor count wins and losses, but he is the one to thank for our website, the Sho'Board with streaming schedules and results, as well as the program guides we read at varsity contests. Phil updates the Washington College Athletics website just minutes after the final horn sounds or last pitch is thrown, and continues to do a fantastic job after only three years here at WC.
Ticknor first realized that WC was closing in on this remarkable feat by a stroke of luck while conducting other research on our varsity teams. Ticknor has posted many new statistics on the athletics website, such as year-by-year win/loss records, all-time records, and all-time coach's winning percentages. After all this work, Ticknor decided to add up the total wins for all varsity sports. After only a few headaches, the final number at the end of last year totaled 4,928. Some wins contributing to 5,000 included sports that WC doesn't offer as varsity anymore. "I had the files from the mid-90s on my computer, but they hadn't been updated since 1997. So, I went through and added the last six years to each one. Then I created an all-time result file for women's soccer, which we didn't even have in 1997," said Ticknor.
"I cross-referenced and supplemented the files with our archived all-time records on paper. After that, I figured, why not go ahead and make all-time result files for our defunct sports as well?" Sports such as football, golf, wrestling, cross country, and track were all entered into the computer and comprise a sizable portion of Washington College's win total.
"I spoke with Dr. Matthews about it after I knew we were closing in on
5,000, and he agreed that it was a noteworthy accomplishment," Ticknor said. "Subscribers to WC Sports Daily, our daily e-mail digest, were kept up to date with our current total throughout the year until our women's lacrosse team reached the magic number with last Tuesday's win over Lynchburg."
Through all his hard work and tiring effort to alert the Washington College community to its historic accomplishment, Ticknor is satisfied and impressed with the milestone that WC has reached. "I think reaching 5,000 wins was a significant thing to publicize as a noteworthy accomplishment, since it's reflective of our collective success as an athletic department, rather than that of one specific team. Going through all of those results and tabulating the records of our all-time coaches gave me some additional historical perspective on Washington College Athletics and took me on a trip through the growth and evolution in our department. This is my third year here and I've come to appreciate the tradition of athletics here as well as the dedication of our coaches, staff, and student-athletes. I can only hope that our recognition of our 5,000 win, as well as the work I've done here in general, has enabled more people to gain that same appreciation."
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